Big Fish Games has hired gaming executive Chris Williams to lead the charge on the company’s free-to-play games strategy.
“I am excited to be working with such a content-rich company, and look forward to working with its network of more than 550 developers, as well as its in-house teams, to help create the most playable and fun F2P games in the market.”
Williams is the former vice president of products and strategy at PlayFirst where he helped the company grow its mobile business. Before that, he worked at LucasArts Entertainment, serving as project lead for games such as Indiana Jones and a number of Star Wars titles. Big Fish said it plans to launch several free-to-play games in the coming year.
VoloMetrix, a Seattle enterprise software startup, has named Phil Friedman to the position of vice president of product marketing. He previously worked at Microsoft in various roles, including director of product management in the Windows Live. The company also recently formed an advisory board that includes Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa and a former executive at SuccessFactors; Dave Girouard, founder and CEO of Upstart and former president of Google Enterprise; Bruce Jaffe, CEO of Three Point Group and former CFO at Glam Media and former corporate vice president at Microsoft; and Dave Yarnold, CEO of ServiceMax.
Former drugstore.com CEO Dawn Lepore has joined the board of AOL, an interesting addition to the media company given her e-commerce and financial roots. Lepore, who now serves as CEO of San Francisco-based online financial services firm Prosper Marketplace, said that AOL is “a clear industry leader in creating cutting-edge digital advertising solutions.” She also sits on the boards of eBay and Coupons.com.
Data I/O Corp., a Redmond maker of manual and automated device programming systems, has appointed Anthony Ambrose to the position of president and CEO. He replaces Fred Hume who is retiring from the company. Ambrose most recently served as principal of consulting firm Cedar Mill Partners, and before that served as vice president and general manager of RadiSys Corporation and worked at Intel. “Data I/O is a worldwide leader in device programming systems and I look forward to applying all of my experience to grow the business,” he said.
Box CEO Aaron Levie has joined the advisory board of Crashlytics, a startup that provides diagnostics on mobile app crashes.
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